Love Letters: 2000 Years of Romance. Edited by Andrea Clarke. The British Library; 128 pages; £7
“HOW do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnet to her future husband Robert may be the most famous love letter in English. Never mind that she did not send it—or even show it to him—until after they were safely wed in 1846. Writing words of fervent passion was the way that even the most tongue-tied wooed for centuries. Alas, the form has fallen out of fashion. Rare are those who pick up a pen to declare, “I am in love. Deeply. Un-endingly, for ever and ever,” as Mervyn Peake did to his wife Maeve Gilmore in the 1940s. Today we Skype, send texts or outsource the job to Hallmark and heart-shaped emoticons.